Photo: Jacobsohn/Getty
Before I even put up today's post more letters from the York exchange started piling up accusing me of not knowing what I'm talking about – so I'm assuming those same letters will be even more relevant after they see that post. "Nothing quite like a dilettante trying to explain the theory of relativity. Good show!" wrote one.

Okay, first of all, give me a break with the "theory of relativity" nonsense. If all of you Wall Street people actually had the brains of nuclear physicists we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.

But as far as your general point goes, I plead guilty. I'm not an expert on any of this. Anyone who is, is welcome to write to me and fill me in. And obviously it wasn't just CDOs and CDS and MBS that caused this crash. Everything points to a confluence of many different bad or unsound practices. There are plenty of people out there who actually know what they're talking about who are describing these issues – the predatory lending, those crazy subprime mortgages in which the low teaser rates were like the free drinks that brought borrowers to the blackjack table (hoping they would hit 21 via continually rising real estate prices), the ramping back of one Roosevelt-era regulation after another (culminating in the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act), the generally high level of speculative home-buying, etc.

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Photo: Tama/Getty
Making that first entry in a blog is sort of like taking that first step into sexual deviancy. Once that zipper comes down, the label sticks forever.  Blogger. What a horrible word. It has such an awful, dirty, biological sound to it. The words it reminds me of are words like felch, belch, bilge, log, globes and rubber. It sounds like belching log-rubber. And now I am one. I feel sick.

I’ll get into why we here at Rollingstone.com decided to start this blog at some other time. Let’s just say that I’ll be making semi-regular updates to this page, and occasionally adding live or nearly-live commentary to things like debates and other events. This page will also contain links to web versions of all my print articles from Rolling Stone and provide contact info for anyone looking to reach or stalk me/my editors as the case may be.

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